Get the parent directory of a given file

Question

Suppose file stores the pathname of a non-dir file.

How can I get its parent directory?

why does the following way by appending /.. to its value not work

$ cd $file/..   
cd: ./Tools/build.bat/..: No such file or directory

Thanks.

Solution 1

Assuming

$ file=./Tools/build.bat

With a POSIX compatible shell (including zsh):

$ echo "${file%/*}"
./Tools

With dirname:

$ echo "$(dirname -- "$file")"
./Tools

(at least GNU dirname takes options, so the -- is required in case the path starts with a dash.)

Solution 2

If you are using zsh try :h modifier

cd $file:h

You can add n of them to go n levels up in directory structure.

Solution 3

this is quite simple with the command dirname, just do the folowing:

cd "$(dirname -- "$file")"

now you can even go further on this

file=/home/switch87/.bashrc
cd "$(dirname -- "$file")"
cd "$(dirname -- "$file")"/..

first cd will get you to /home/switch87, the seccond to /home

Solution 4

get the directory of the file in a very general way (when file is known with a relative or absolute pathname, or no path at all):

the_dir="$(cd -P "$(dirname "${filename}")";pwd)"

So to get the parent of that directory:

the_parent_dir="$(cd -P "$(dirname "${filename}")/..";pwd)"

cd -P : print the "real" (physical) path, instead of a path using symbolic links. If you take the -P out it also works, but you may get a different result ( for exemple: cd / ; ln -s /long/path/here shortcut ; cd shortcut ; pwd will show you the path: /shortcut, whereas if you added -P to cd you would see /long/path/here instead)

Solution 5

I prefer to use a combination of readlink and dirname.

parent=$(readlink -f "$(dirname "$file")")
cd $parent

dirname cuts the filename from the path and readlink -f turns $path/.. into a canonical path.

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Comments

[schaiba]

Example of such a pathname?

[ivanivan]

dirname may be what you want

[Tim]

@schaiba ./Tools/build.bat as in the example

[Sahil Chaudhary]

Do you ever search before asking or ask basic questions just for the upvotes? It's hard to believe you couldn't find this doing a little searching.

[Stéphane Chazelas]

Also works in csh/tcsh where it comes from though in those shells, you'll need to add a :q to account for directory names that contain blanks or wildcards.

[Tim]

Thanks. why does the following way by appending /.. to its value not work

[Tim]

okay, I see it is because $file isn't a directory

[gardenhead]

Do you really need the echo?

[Pysis]

Just a note: I use dirname all the time, as I find it more expressive.

[ilkkachu]

@gardenhead, only for demonstration. Of course really we'd just do somecommand "${file%/*}" (And even for printing, printf would arguably be better.)

[Gilles 'SO- stop being evil']

That potentially gives a different path to the directory, which may not be desirable.